I may be parting ways with an 83 C10, 2WD shorty, well preserved as well.
68k miles, southern truck, one repaint. Red/Red, fully optioned and as clean as new underneath

I may have some interest in your truck. Please private message me with information if you decide you'd like to part ways. Thanks again and good luck with the Formula...I'm excited to hear how it goes!

Looks like a cool car. That's the original falling vinyl headliner that has separated from the foam backing. There's a giant single cardboard backing piece that is very fragile. Needs to be carefully removed and recovered.

Looks like the underside of the car was heavily rustproofed with Ziebart. That is removable with lots of elbow grease and some Gojo. Look what this member did to remove the that gunk just the other day on his '76 Bird. That Ziebart was an amazing preservative for pristine metal underneath.

https://www.yenko.net/forum/showthread.php?t=156730

BTW, Evaporust is a buffered solution that just chemically rinses the surface rust away without altering the metal underneath or the paint. Go through my thread and you can see what it can do for a survivor car - see what it did to the rusty driveshaft before and after. But you'd really have to steam cleam/pressure wash the underside to reomve the dirt and Ziebart before you could do anything with Evaporust on any bare metal surface - if there is any grease or dirt in the way, it is a waste of time.

https://www.yenko.net/forum/showthre...123936&page=14

By the way, I see in the photos that the key is in the run position and the gas gauge is reading 9:00 PM. :-) That means the fuel tank sender has gone bad. You can go through my other thread and see what is involved in replacing that unit (and finding a new sender for the weird 75/76 year cars).

https://www.yenko.net/forum/showthre...113621&page=16

In looking at the photos it appears to have had some paint work. There is overspray on both sides of the cowl in front of the winshield, near the fenders, that should not be there. The overspray is on top of the blacked out section as well as on top of the sealer at the cowl seam. The gas tank has overspray as well on top of the Ziebart. That Ziebart would have been applied at the dealership after delivery.

Steve
Thank you appreciate the insights. Where I am confused is that overspray under the hood near the windshield is VERY uniform on both side and there is not paint on the edge of the plastic insert closest to the windshield. Does not look like any bolts have been turned or removed. Are you 100% sure that overspray from the factory is not possible?
Also on the overspray on the tank, there is no other over spray on the spring wrapped line or the leaf spring which would certainly be the case if it made it on to the tank and that is also consistent with the other side?
Honestly appreciate what you shared but knowing the history of the car and mileage, I cannot imagine that front and rear were painted and returned to such factory appearance down to the door edge guards, stripes and emblems......
Additional thoughts? THANK YOU AGAIN!

Here's a comparison with my 73 survivor car - no overspray there, and my 1975 Firebird that my family has owned since new. You'll note there is some tan overspray in the central cowl area in front of the windshield on our 75 - This is the overspray from the saddle colored interior paint on the dashboard.

The cowl on your 76 looks like orange overspray over the black cowl paint and not just poor coverage by the black paint on the cowl over original orange body paint. BTW, the front ends were painted in a different place than the rest of the body so there would be no reason for overspray to be that far down the front of the cowl unless the person in charge of the blackout spray painting was having a bad day?

As for the tank, the fact that the overspray is on top of the Zeibart makes it impossible for it to have been factory overspray. Also, the fuel tanks were not in the car when the body was painted. The straps themselves were in the car and hanging which results in an odd factory situation where you'd have body colored painted straps and a natural metal tank. Could it be similar colored road dust and not orange overspray??? I would ask the seller to get you some natural light photos (no flash) of the sides of the gas tank to see what we are looking at.

Is there a way anyone can get a photo of the underside edge of fender edge by those cowl areas? If it's black under there then the orange is later overspray. If its orange under there, then it could be factory applied but with a really skimpy blackout treatment. A plus is that there is no orange paint on the cowl seal and the green zinc is fully intact on the retaining clips (the zinc finish is easy to damage when removing these clips)

Maybe we can get fellow member 70copo to render an opinion on the paint process as to whether the blackout paint occurred before or after body color was applied. He literally wrote the book on the Norwood Assembly plant and its processes. https://www.norwoodassemblyplant.com/ (i'll send him a message)

BTW, in the ad they indicate:
"the heating and fan control has been disconnected, as the original owner removed the heater core from the car in 1990 when it was set up for long-term storage. The original heater core IS included, and with it installed and the fan controls connected again, I am quite sure it would function."
When you look at the engine bay you can see that the heater core nipples are showing in their original place sticking out of the firewall. Just the hoses appear to be missing. It is a major job to do a heater core on one of these cars. Like 8 hours labor. (in the thread on my 73 you can see how involved it is. To do it right, you have to pull the bottom bolts out of the fender and inner fender to access some of the heater box bolts and the heater box comes out from the inside of the car after you remove the seats, console, radio, all the skin from your knuckles...)

All in all it looks like a really neat car and I think you'd have a lot of fun with it, though it only has around 185 horsepower. The underside cleaning would be fun winter project in a nice heated garage. :-)

If you look at that hood stop bolt on top of the cowl you can see the black was sprayed after the body color. You can see how the bolt blocked the black from getting on the orange that was already there. If the orange was sprayed second it would have covered the black that you can see in front of the orange side of that bolt. Make sense ?

That car is a cream puff!! Buy it and get the headliner fixed and a little TLC underneath. Love the dog dish look...

Pretty Car ! I've always preferred the Formulas over the T/A's Love the Color,4spd & Dog dishes !!! Good Luck

Yup. That makes sense in a forensic, crime scene kind of way. Looks like we had an apathetic, altitude-challenged blackout painter who refused to move from his standing location in the lower center/front of the body area, versus the tall, happily employed guy who painted my two cars and who actually moved his position to cover both ends of the cowl.

You can see the opposite coverage pattern on the bolt on my 73, where the blackout paint hit it from the side. The fact that the bolt was fully white before the blackout paint hit it does confirm that there was a %$#load of body colored paint in that area prior to being blacked out.